Choke Canyon Reservoir
TXKBL Event # 5
May 20, 2023

    As our TXKBL series winds down, the last Central venue was fished by the TXKBL gang on Saturday, May 20th. This lake didn't disappoint. Everything about fishing Choke Canyon had a sense of high drama to it - the weather, the wildlife, the AOY race, and the size of the bass. 95 anglers set out to prove they were up to the challenge of unpredictable, heavy winds and stormy weather, ill-tempered dinosaurs with boundary issues, and powerboaters who blythely ignored their presence. Fun times, though, right? I thought so, and I'm sure the rest of you who fished the event agree - we're all about the good vibes, good times, and five-fish limits. Choke Canyon provided us with a chance for that, and more.

    Saturday started out under a cloud. Not a figurative one. A literal cloud, with an uncomfortable amount of lightning. I can outrun an alligator, but not a lightning bolt. A storm cell blew through that churned up the water at the ramp and made it quite impossible to launch if you were on the south end of the lake. Shoot, my kayak, left high and dry prior to launch, decided it wanted to take a trip to the dam when 3-foot rollers picked it up off the ramp and tried to launch without me in it. Quick thinking on behalf of my compatriots saved me the ignominy of having to have someone rescue my pilotless, wayward kayak. Some compared the conditions to launching in the surf down on the gulf. Most opted for a safer, less violatile launch and waited until the 3-footers became nice, calm 2-footers. The Texas Department of Safety's motto during flash floods is "Turn Around, Don't Drown". For us kayakers who delayed our launch, it was "Stay Dry, Don't Die". So we huddled in our vehicles and waited for an opening. As the winds died and the rain stopped, the intrepid and the brave launched into the surf, followed by the more cautious. Soon, by around 6:45am, the entire flotilla was in the water and the race to catch fish was on 

    How would the wind, lightning storm, and post-frontal conditions affect the fishing? Not much at all, judging by the number of people who limited, roughly half the field. The common denominator seemed to be small fish. Lots of small fish. If you were fishing the rocky points off the south shore, that's what you found - tons of willing fish, but so many of them were dinky that upgrades and culls were measured in 1/4 inch increments. Not all of the fish were fun-sized, though. There were some real ones in the mix, too. Eighteen bass of 20" or more were caught, including two Sharelunker submissions of 24"-plus. The problem wasn't lack of fish, it was getting the right ones to the kayak and on the Ketch Board for a photo session. If you managed two or more 18" to supplement the smaller ones, you had a shot at the money. Turns out you had no shot at the leader, though. Holy guacamole, did Bryan Scarberry put a whoopin' on the field. While we were looking for fish in the high-teens, Bryan was catching a sack so epic that it was worthy of a Juelgian comparison, with no fish less than 20". It was like Bryan wasn't even fishing the same lake. We've had two events thus far in 2023 that have boggled the mind. Ricky's Houston County opus was worthy of high praise, and deservedly so. Bryan's effort was like watching a magic trick and not knowing how on earth it was possible for anyone to pull it off. But he did. With witnesses. From the same water that the rest of us were fishing. Magic.

    So there was Bryan, making the rest of us look like fools, but what about the other individual performances? San Antonio's own Eugene Mora III, the man so nice, they named him thrice, decided to give the rest of the field a shot by taking it easy with most of the afternoon off the water so that he could spend it with his family. I don't blame him a bit. Time on dry land with his beautiful wife and baby daughter certainly had advantages over fighting the swirling, directionally-challenged winds and waves, searching for that elusive big girl. Here's where I think the Bryan's and Eugene's of the world had it right, and gave all of us a lesson to take to heart: Bryan was throwing large swimbaits. Eugene was fishing his spinnerbait jig-fashion. Was anybody else doing it like that? Doubtful. Maybe the bigger bass were keying on gizzard shad? I didn't think to throw something big, and maybe that's what separates the winners from the might-have-beens. Sometimes, you have to be unconventional, because the others who played it safe didn't do enough to put things out of reach.

    There were some individual stories that deserve to be told. The most heart-warming was the story of the young man who skipped his graduation ceremony in order to fish the Choke Canyon event. Our main sponsor, No Bad Days Kayak, rewarded this young man's impeccable priorities with a $200... *ahem*... scholarship. We value dedication and camaraderie in this trail. We also value a good awards ceremony and doing the right thing by people who do right by us. Thanks, No Bad Days Kayak and owner Forrest Greene. That was a classy move from a very classy sponsor. Now y'all be sure to repay his faith in our trail by patronizing his establishment, now with a newly-opened location in New Braunfels.

    Our emcee extraordinaire, Kris Delgado, limped into the awards ceremony with tales of spackling compound, rockabilly beauties, and a rigged Elvis impersonation contest that frankly, I'm still trying to figure out. C'mon, Slim - Wise men say, only fools rush in. You're too stylish to be a proper peanut-butter and banana sandwich-eating Elvis. I'm sure that's what the judges were looking for. But you made our ceremony the top-quality event that it is, and we learned the fate of our day's effort after an awesome raffle that saw some lucky contestants walk away with gift certificates, gear, baits, and some super-high quality fishing rods. Our sponsors are the best. Thanks to remote judge and the primo Tournament Director in the Great State of Texas Kris Morales for sorting out the submissions and getting the order right. We're so fortunate to have a double-barrel of Kris's to run our events. They do so without drama, without stepping on people's toes, and without making the judging a controversial shit-show that distracts from the efforts of the event's participants. That's where Kris M. wants the focus and that's where the focus has remained from Day One of this trail.

    I'll do this in reverse order, as usual. We had a very, very tight race for the money. I figured going in that if the big 'uns weren't wanting to play, an 80-inch limit would have a shot. Close. If you had 81.75", and a bigger tie-breaker, you won 10th place, as evidenced by Jonathan Aguirre's limit and bigger kicker that won him $100. Nicely done, sir. In 9th place, here's a name that's coming up frequently in 2023 - Jared Parker. He had a 82.75" limit that also won him $100, but lost out to Joe Booth's 82.75" limit with a bigger kicker, beating Jared's 22.25" with his own 23.5" beauty for 8th place. That extra inch meant an extra C-note, as Joe took home $200. Did I mention this next guy before? I believe I did. Ricky Juelg, your 84" day took 7th place and a check (well... PayPal) for $250. 6th place went to Tyler Howell, another high-finisher in event after event. Tyler is such a gentleman, in every sense of the word. He's a no-nonsense as they come. He had 84.5" and he won $300. Another top ten for the big guy.

    Now comes the anglers who won the alligator-themed hardware. Damn, those awards look stylish, don't they? It sure would be nice to take one home, again. Oh, well. In 5th place, we had Phillip Wyatt, with 85". The next few spots were separated by a 1/4". Think how you position your fish for pics matters? If you don't, then you're probably not having your name called for an award any time soon. 4th place went to Jacob Moeller, who is as steady an angler as there is, and who no doubt would be a force on the national scene if he decided to dedicate himself to those trails. Jacob had 85.25" and this earned him $500. Next up, Ernesto Mendoza in 3rd place, who had a 85.5" day and he took home $700. You want to know something really cool? Read Ernesto's recap on Facebook. I love reading recaps on Facebook from y'all, even if you didn't get a bite all day. There's just something about the sharing experience that we do as anglers that makes this sport so unique and it does so much to create camaraderie and goodwill. Ernesto, thank you for your great, well-written sucess story. I loved it and I know I wasn't the only one. Well done, sir.

    I teased earlier about the top two guys. Eugene Mora, you're such a badass that you don't even need a full day on the water to take 2nd and cash a check for $900 with 86.75". If you don't know Eugene, he's served as the TD for SAKF, a well-run trail that I hope one day we get to fish again. The raffle prizes coming out of that trail were epic. But you'd expect no less from such a quality guy, because he's all about making people better and showing them off in the best light. Well, for this event, the spotlight was on you for much of the day as the first name on the leaderboard. Only one contestant passed you up, but he pretty much lapped the field and came around for a second pass on all of us. Big Bass? That went to Bryan Scarberry, with his 24.50"'-er caught in the last hour, during a period Bryan didn't even know we had the ability to fish, after Kris tacked on an exra hour due to the weather. How crazy is that? How cray-cray is it that Bryan won with 113", more than 25" better than the second place finisher? That's like... an extra Sharelunker's worth of bass. Bryan's big swimbait strategy clearly worked. I'm sure a bunch of us were left saying "Why didn't I think of that?" That's fishing, folks. It's almost a guarantee that someone, somewhere in our impressive pool of talent will figure it out and post a sack that makes us all just shake our heads in disbelief. Last Saturday, that man was Bryan Scarberry. Make no mistake about it - he's a stick. He was a force in the latter days of the KATS tournament series and he didn't let up at Choke Canyon with our trail. He's done well at Hobie and other national events and if you were surprised to see him accept the award for first place, don't be. Bryan is very, very good.

    So that does it for the Central leg of the TXKBL series. We survived the alligators and the storms on Choke Canyon. One more to go for the SE trio of venues, this one at Big Sam - Sam Rayburn Reservoir on Sept 23. We'll be running this one alongside AJ's Hobie BOS trail, and if you'd like to double-dip and fish both, be sure you're following the Hobie rules. Biggest rule change - no motors on the two days of competition. Pre-fishing off-periods are a bit different, too. But don't let that stop you - Hobie BOS is an excellent trail, with great awards. You'll be fishing against some of the nation's top-quality talent. Let me say this, though: They're no better, no worse than our TXKBL guys and gals. I would not be at all suprised to see a local stalwart take home a $10K check from Sam Rayburn. Y'all are good. It's a pleasure to fish against each and every one of you and I'm very honored to say I'm part of TXKBL. I'm sure that sentiment is echoed by all y'all, too. See you on the water in September at Sam Rayburn, if not before. Tight lines, and be safe.

You can follow Andrew Jacobson on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/andrew.jacobson.39566 and on instagram @atorjacobson